Chapter 9
NINE
Caleb
By the time Mateo sticks his head out the motel room door, I’ve got a better handle on the where and the who.
Eliza was having an affair with her employer at Sonora Capital Investments.
A top-level exec who, from the looks of it, had his hands in something dirty.
Brooke had the file in her hands—until she didn’t.
“So she gave you the file, then changed her mind?” I ask.
Brooke sighs. “She panicked when she heard you.”
Right. That tracks. She thought I was the threat. “And she said her boss is connected?”
Brooke nods. “I have confirmation she worked at Sonora. But I never got to find out who her direct boss was. Not that it would have mattered. She could have lied to protect herself.”
My mind races. A whistleblower going up against a giant like Sonora Capital would be terrified, and with good reason.
It’s not just job loss. These companies don’t play fair.
They crush people. Quietly. Completely. And anyone who stands against them ends up alone, broke, and looking over their shoulder.
But would they go as far as murder?
Resolve settles in like a familiar weight across my chest. “We can go look for the file.”
Her expression shifts—gloom traded for the faintest flicker of hope. It’s barely there, but I catch it.
“It’s literally a needle in a haystack,” she says.
Even as I open my mouth, I hear Silas in my head, calm, firm, always practical. Don’t make promises Hightower can’t keep.
But I say it anyway. “We’ll find it.”
“How?”
Before I can answer, Mateo steps into full view, moving quiet as smoke. He gives me a ' we good? ’ look, and I throw him a thumbs-up so he can toss the duffels into the back of the Pathfinder.
“When can we go back?”
And just like that, she’s back in the fight.
“We’ll need to be careful,” I say. “Cops’ll be twitchy after last night. You don’t want them assigning a patrol car to you for ‘suspicious activity.’”
Her shoulders stiffen. “How are we supposed to work on Eliza’s case? I need to be out interviewing people.”
“What people?”
“Her professors. Friends. Coworkers.”
There it is again, that flicker of reckless fire in her eyes. She’s still bleeding from the last hit and already wants back in the ring.
“Interviews are going to have to wait.”
The silence that follows is immediate and sharp. She doesn’t like being sidelined. I don’t blame her. But that doesn’t mean I’m changing the plan.
“Until when?”
Mateo slides into the back seat beside her, all nonchalance. “Awaiting instructions.”
“Until it’s safe for you to do so,” I say.
She looks ready to argue, so I start the engine before she can open her mouth. “We need breakfast.”
“I guess,” Brooke mutters, eyes shifting toward the window.
I catch Mateo’s gaze in the rearview and grin. “An army marches on its stomach, and we’re running on fumes and bad coffee. No guessing about it.”
Brooke draws breath to argue. I beat her to it.
“We’ll be gone ten minutes. There’s a McDonald’s three minutes from here. You can protest after caffeine. ”
She doesn’t argue, which is progress.
She might not feel hungry—grief tends to steal that from you—but she needs food. I snuck a protein bar while she was in the bathroom. Mateo probably ate air and called it discipline.
But if we’re going to find that file—the one Eliza hid before someone made sure she couldn’t talk—we’ll need more than fuel.
We’ll need a green light from above.
Brooke
The drive-thru speaker crackles, spitting Caleb’s clear, polite order back at us. The air in the car thickens with the faint, greasy scent of fried food. I study Caleb’s profile, sharp and unreadable. He’s already thinking three moves ahead, but I need to know the plan, not just wait for it.
He doesn't hand anything back when the food is ready. He simply drops the paper bag onto the passenger seat, already pulling away from the window, his knuckles stark white on the wheel.
A few turns later, he cuts down a side road, tires crunching softly on the gravel, and angles the Pathfinder into a dusty church lot.
It's tucked between skeletal desert scrub and a chain-link fence, the kind of forgotten place that offers quiet refuge.
The adobe walls glow warm beneath the harsh sun, and a single, unassuming white cross rises above the modest roofline. He shifts into park but doesn't move.
Mateo is out before the engine even settles, boots already crunching gravel in measured steps. He begins to walk the fence line, his silhouette moving with disciplined precision against the soft light. Head turning left, forward, right—a familiar, unsettling pattern. No hesitation, just routine.
Caleb sits for another beat, his eyes flicking from rearview to side mirror to the empty road behind us. I climb out after him, smoothing my hair as I scan the church lot. No one is in sight, but that doesn’t mean no one is watching us.
We stop near the front bumper. Caleb sets the McDonald's bag on the hood, keeping his right hand loose at his side as his eyes continue to sweep the perimeter. Then he bows his head.
"Lord," he murmurs, voice low, grounded. "Thank You for this food. For the chance to find the truth."
His words come steady, not rushed or forced. "Thank You for saving Brooke's life. For Mateo's cover. For everything You're doing in this mess, even if we can't see it yet."
"Amen."
Mateo's distant voice echoes the single word. I add mine, barely above a whisper.
Caleb opens the bag, the scent of hashbrowns momentarily overpowering the desert air, and unwraps a sausage biscuit with egg, handing one to me. His eyes, however, never stop their sweep—parking lot, road, fence line.
"Do you always pray before meals?" I ask.
He grins, that crooked, annoyingly charming tilt to his lips. "Try to. Never know what they put in these things."
Mateo snorts from his patrol. "Cholesterol and the tears of college kids."
I don't laugh, but a small, persistent tremor in my chest eases, just for a moment.
They devour their food with the practiced efficiency of men fueling for a mission, each bite deliberate. I force down a bite, but it turns to lead halfway down. My stomach’s too twisted to care about food, not when we're shadowed by questions no one’s answering.
The church building stands silent behind us, its simple cross stark against the morning sky, a quiet sentinel watching over grief, or prayer, or the slow, dawning clarity of God's hand in our chaos.
The moment Caleb swallows his last bite, the calm shatters. He tosses his wrapper into the bag with a decisive crumple and reaches for the door, ushering me inside. Caleb's eyes snap to the rearview mirror, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.
"We'll risk the trail now. Mateo can cover the entrance."
Mateo is already sliding into the back seat, unwrapping a fresh strip of gum with steady fingers, as if nothing in the world can surprise him. "Loop north?" he asks, his tone even.
Caleb nods, his eyes already on the road ahead. "We circle wide."
He looks at me for half a second, something unreadable in his eyes, then shifts into drive. We ease out of the quiet lot, the engine's low hum the only sound, the silence between us now tight and familiar, laced with unspoken tension.
Beside me, Mateo goes rigid. "Red Tacoma. Three cars back. Saw it outside the station too."
"You’re sure?" I ask, pulse hammering.
"Been shadowing us since we left." His voice is flat, unshaken, but the words slam into me.
Caleb's eyes snap to the rearview mirror. His jaw hardens to stone. "Nice catch. We've got a tail."
I reach for my phone, snapping a photo over my shoulder. "Just in case we lose him.”
Caleb doesn't look at me. His foot finds the accelerator as he grinds the words out. “Nice thinking. Now keep your head down,” he says.
Caleb
Praying hard, I keep my eyes glued to the road ahead, trying to think. Hard to do so with Brooke behind me, clutching the ceiling handle like she’s bracing for impact.
The phone rings, sharp, jarring, impossible to ignore. I jab the answer button on the steering wheel. Rule one at Hightower: Always pick up, no matter what.
It’s Delilah. “Not a good time, Dee,” I grit out, swerving left to avoid a slow-moving sedan.
Mateo leans forward, his voice low and tight. “He’s closing the gap.”
In my ear, Delilah squeals. “Are you being shot at?”
“Evasive driving.” My voice is clipped. I tap the brakes hard, then accelerate through the light. “What do you need?”
“Ooooh, still très exciting. Tell Brooke to call her mom. She’s getting worried.”
I pass the message over my shoulder. Brooke’s wide eyes find mine in the rearview mirror. She nods, knuckles still white on the handhold.
I whisper a prayer beneath my breath. Lord, keep us one step ahead. Shield her. Guide me.
My hand tightens on the wheel. I ease the Pathfinder onto Anklam, sun flashing off the windshield as we climb toward the trail access road. Morning light is sharp, everything visible, every movement exposed.
“We can’t lose him in city traffic,” I say. “We take him somewhere open. Somewhere we control. ”
Mateo nods. “You thinking trailhead?”
“Headed there anyway. Utility road off the loop. One way in. Natural choke point.”
Flicking on the indicator for show, I turn off onto the gravel access path. It’s early enough that the trail lot’s still?—
Brooke strains against her seatbelt to get closer. “We’re still going to the trail?”
“Best place to flush him out.” It’s also convenient. Never make it harder for yourself if you don’t have to.
I coast to a stop near a service pullout, just enough dust to make it look like we jerked off the road suddenly. The tires crunch to a halt on loose gravel. Heat ripples off the hood.
Mateo’s already moving. “Want the hood up?”
“Yeah. Sell it.”
I pop the latch, then jump out and flip the hood open fully, letting the engine tick and steam under the sun. It’ll look like we overheated on the climb. Classic misdirection. Let them think we’re stuck.